Everyone pretends that the only important thing in their lives is getting some and they’re committed to getting their share. Especially included in this assessment are people who say they are about sustainability. They are teaching it, selling it, preaching it and genuinely, authentically believing in it but none of this produces a result beyond their own satisfaction, which isn’t to be disdained but global warming affects our planet’s ability to sustain human life and what we’re doing to survive and succeed is the cause.

It’s so obvious that we could reverse global warming in order to sustain an environment friendly to human life by changing our personal economic priorities but we can’t change these priorities because they appear to be survival of ourselves and our children and the only available means at this time produce global warming, i.e., our economic priorities spells doom for our grand children. We know it and we would like to think they don’t know it because it makes us look bad. Religionists get around this by blaming this on the devil and concocting a biblical rationale that justifies disaster.

On the positive side:

Global warming has revealed the global nature of human being. This unifying function could actually make a solution possible, however, since life occurs for each of us and all of us in personal, local interactions, the global effect is a sum of all our local activities. So we say, think global act local and as with all such slogans, it loses power as a principle. While the solution to this global climate problem must be the result of changes in local and personal economic priorities promulgated concurrently around the world, the global communications technology that has created the global community is not an actuator of change at local levels. It works the other way around. It will help if we pay more attention to integrity in media because for half a century now, we have been absorbing our core values from media, however, we have to focus on areas where change is consistent with ambition, taste and desires.

Summarizing:

Global warming results from the social order produced by values we have absorbed, primarily from commercial and political media. We pay lip service to humanizing environmentally cooperative activities and the arts and boost competitive sports and status related to material wealth. This economic system is now our chief religion. We call it capitalism and it features a hierarchy based on wealth and power that in different from historical religious orders. It features a monetary system evolved in a past era, when technologies were simpler and environmental responsibility and social equity could be managed with engineering tweaks and government regulations and such remedies are now insufficient. This economic system (capitalism) accommodates activities of more than 7.2 billion people involving a myriad social and personal commitments and changes we require must take place at a personal level, in relationships between men and women, parents and children, brother and sisters.

Sustaining the global ecosystem entails consciousness within relatively intimate personal relationships such that affinity takes priority over greed and even survival. Meanwhile, every one of us has a different set of standards, fears, justifications, concerns regarding how we perceive and relate to others and there’s this issue of competitiveness that is in our European cultural heritage. Finding and nurturing local affinity allows redistribution of economic power, such that those who now feel or fear being left out can anticipate being included and those who are comfortable are comfortable sharing. This shows up as communities in which all children, regardless of their ethnicity, education, gender or economic status, as well as those who are now excluded by dint of age, physical shape or ability, can participate. But, how to get from here to there and how long with it take? Not long. Thirty seconds.

Restating the problem sorts out the solution:

Global warming has occurred. Global warming isn’t the problem, it’s the symptom. To survive this symptom, our civilization must shift core values by encouraging and empowering all people to act in new ways, regardless of their economic circumstances, age, gender, ethnicity or any other category we invent to separate people into categories. This inclusion shifts priorities from wars and scarcity to peace and prosperity, shifting the focus of human civilization from global domination to local emphasis and from serving growth and competitiveness to guarantees of care and preservation. What does it look like locally to encourage and empower all people without regard for differences in their wealth or their ethnicity?

So, here is the access to local power, here is where local action can be taken and there is nothing to prevent it. All it requires is a reassessment of our stereotypical views of everything but especially, everyone, including ourselves. It may sound strange to you to hear this put in this way but what keeps us from acting responsible is founded in acts, words and systems of discrimination. You may balk at how and why this shows up because though you view nondiscriminatory behavior as sacrosanct, you still view the human population of your local world in classes. An opening for experiencing life and relationship differently is available in each and every case, by questioning and reshaping the stereotypical myth.

Global effects are the aggregate of myriad local actions, thus local action can achieve global result. Local action means what we each do each day for a living and for pleasure, what we give to each other and what we take. Local action means paying attention to local politics in a new and more responsible way to bring our ideas to manage local political boards, town and city councils, planning commissions, regional agencies, local news publishers and media outlets as opposed to abandoning such entities to other influence. It means controlling the effect of political endorsements by the organization or agency you work for such that we are looking out for the community rather than commercial or private interests.

You, making your difference; being a leader where you work, study and/or reside means ignoring email and other calls to global, state or national action, despite the compelling barrage of media, and instead, putting your focus on local policy and local action.

Local actions are specific. This website is a means of developing and promulgating specific, local projects in my field: music and media.

…

Historically,

I started out life on November 22, 75 years ago. I inherited a genetic condition which renders me measurably a genius and emotionally as high strung as a spooky thoroughbred Arabian. I grew up in the inner city of Philadelphia before we had distinctions like, autism spectrum and as a result, I had some interesting social experiences stemming from reactions and defenses that were appropriate to my condition but not understandable to and by normal people. When I was eleven years old, I was expelled from the “white” elementary school and found myself the only white boy in a segregated school for black children who were on average, five years older and one to two feet taller than I. I was 15 the summer I started college at California State University Long Beach. Etc. My genius allowed me to perfect some defenses related to my sometimes autistic emotional sensitivity but for most of my life I had no idea how different I am from most people, because I assumed that everyone was like me. How was I to know. The rest of this is a long story that I don’t intend to tell here. Suffice it to say that I’ve done a lot of amazing things to be proud of and although I’ve also done a lot of things that didn’t make sense, in retrospect, what I am today and what I have to contribute today wouldn’t be possible had I not had such experiences.

In 1979, I created goals for 5, 10, 20 and 40 years. I’ve accomplished many of these goals and I failed some and took some off the list. I’ve also done many valuable things I hadn’t imagined. My daughter and grand children, for instance. Failure as well as success informs me, gives me confidence as each experience leads to another.

Today, I am a creator, a composer, an artist, a writer and producer. I’m up to transformation of culture from scarcity to generosity, from fear and loathing to abundance, acceptance and pleasure.

You will find personal allusions here. I’ve not withheld anything from consideration. I’m 75. I have all my teeth and testosterone levels nearly normal for an adolescent, somewhat frustrating since I can only reasonably expect to be around for another 20 years. It’s a testimony to my courage that I have two nymphomaniac friends.